


Rain Will Make The Flowers

by fel24601



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: 8th year, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAZ BEING A SHIT, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Pining, Simon being stubborn, Sort of? - Freeform, canon compliant to a certain point?, eventual background DeNiall, idiots to lovers, probably incorrect medical jargon, talk of medical procedures, tenuous allies to lovers, this is ONE BIG TROPE enjoy, what's not to love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-01-10 20:18:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18415106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fel24601/pseuds/fel24601
Summary: “Maybe you’re getting sick,” I say.“I don’t get sick,” Baz says.“Because you’re a vampire?”“No.”8th year AU inspired by the Hanahaki Disease trope.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An 8th year AU inspired by the Hanahaki Disease trope. The events of Carry On remain the same up to the vampire den (ie. Simon and Baz are not together, though their truce stands.) (but also I haven’t given this TOO much thought so don’t @ me if there are timeline plot holes I’m just here for the angst)  
>   
> I believe that the Snowbaz tag has just 2 (TWO) hanahaki fics, and it’s way too good of a premise to not have more content in this fandom!!! So hello it’s me, here to give you my take on how it would play out with these characters. Many thanks to the writers of those two lovely fics for inspiring me to give it a shot- BasilAndSnow61 and Stxxle <3  
>   
> As per usual I’m just word vomiting this out as it comes to me. Expect quick updates but also I have no idea what I’m doing.  
> Enjoy!!

**SIMON**

“Sir,” I say. “You—with, uh, with all due respect, I mean—you can’t be serious.”

We’ve been over this. He brought this up months ago, way back in September, and I refused him.

The Mage frowns at me, leans toward me over his cluttered desk. “I am being perfectly serious. You would be better off away from Watford, somewhere safe where we could be certain that the Humdrum would pose less of a threat to our student body.”

It’s a heavy blow, to suggest that I’m putting everyone in danger just by _being here._

“Sir, please. I have to stay. It’s my last year—”

“It could be _everyone’s_ last year,” he snaps. “I humoured you last time. Now I expect you to do as I ask.”

Frustration bubbles in my throat and I have to look away from him. I let my eyes sweep the Mage’s office in all its disarray and will them not to sting. I can’t leave now. It’s my last term. Penny is here, and Agatha. _Baz_ is even back and our truce is going weirdly well and we haven’t solved his mother’s murder yet—

“Simon. Calm yourself. It reeks of smoke in here.”

My eyes burn. “The Humdrum only attacks while I’m at Watford,” I say.

“So it would be in Watford’s best interest for you to leave.”

“No—what if it attacks and I’m not here?” My fists clench at my sides. _Please._ “I’m the one who’s got to defeat it. I have to be here.”

The Mage’s face is hard as stone. “I won’t hear more of this. Go pack your things. We leave in the morning.”

I’m making the air hazy with magic, it’s pouring out of me like smoke off a green fire. “I can’t leave. I can’t.”

“Simon, **_calm down!_** ”

Then, with a rush, my ears pop, and the choke of my magic is gone and replaced with the parched, sucking emptiness that only ever means one thing.

“ _Simon,”_ the Mage hisses, and leaps to his feet.

Behind me, comically huge in the Mage’s cramped office, is _yet another Chimaera._

(How many of these bloody things do I need to explode before the Humdrum picks _something_ else?)

It snarls, hot breath puffing out over my skin and blowing loose papers from the desk, so at least it’s corporeal this time. The Sword of Mages drops into my hand, ready.

The serpent tail swishes and knocks a shelf of books to the floor.

The Mage looks on, weary. “Get this creature out of my office. And for the love of Merlin, don’t break anything else.” He still grips his wand, though it’s useless. My stomach turns with the Humdrum’s emptiness.

I raise the Sword as the Chimaera bares its teeth and roars in my face. It lurches. I slash toward it, and a cupboard door cracks off its hinges. Papers spill out and blanket the floor. Baz would be able to do this tidier, I’m sure.

It growls, and I growl back.

Another sweep of my Sword and the Chimaera leaps left, then right. A globe shatters, then a lamp, and one good toss of its mighty head smashes a glass cabinet full of dainty little artefacts into millions of diamond shards.

“Sorry, Sir!”

“Just kill the beast, Simon,” says the Mage, shrinking against the wall behind me.

I fake left and then slash upward, catching the creature right in the throat. It erupts into glass shards and falls amongst the wreckage of everything else, just another mess to clean up.

The Sword vanishes, and I sigh, spent. The sucking feeling slowly recedes.

The office is a disaster. My trainers are half buried in glittering shards of glass and debris. The Mage looks morosely at the wreckage of the glass cabinet.

I wince. “I hope it can all be fixed.”

He points his wand. “ ** _As you were_** ,” he says, and the papers fly back into place, cupboard door straightens, bookshelf repairs itself, and some of the glass melds back together into the cabinet front. Still more stays on the ground. And the cabinet stays empty.

“What was in there?” I ask, gesturing to the bare shelf.

He crouches down and prods his wand into the mess of glass. “Only rare and valuable magical artefacts. Completely irreplaceable.”

I gulp, and my cheeks heat.

He pulls forth what looks like most of an hourglass, a jagged shard of something green, a single, perfect flower petal.

“Well,” he says. “What’s done is done.”

My hands tremble. “Can—can I help you clean it up, Sir?”

He doesn’t look up. “Go back to your dormitory, Simon. We’re done here.”

I move toward the door, and glass crunches under my shoes. “Er—do I have to, I mean, am I staying—”

“Just _go._ I expect you to perform well in your classes tomorrow.”

I leave quick, before he can change his mind.

*     *     *

 

I’ve barely stepped foot into our room before Baz whirls on me.

“Crowley, what the hell happened to you?” His eyes rake over me with displeasure (concern?)

I kick off my shoes. They’re sparkly with glass bits. “Chimaera. In the Mage’s office.”

Baz sneers. “Another one? Has the Humdrum no creativity?”

“Exactly!”

“Stop,” he says, and gets up from his desk. He plucks his wand from his sleeve and points it at me. “You’re making a mess everywhere, you numpty. **_Clean as a whistle._** ”

His magic sears me like a grease burn, but I appreciate it anyway.

“How’d you do in this one?” he asks, turning from me and heading back to his textbook. “Go nuclear and vaporize it?”

I collapse face-first onto my bed. Merlin, it’s comfy. “No. That was one time. I did this one the old fashioned way.”

“Hacked it to bits?”

“Not so much hacking, more one good stab.”

“Good man.”

I snort. “Hang on. Was that a _compliment?_ ”

He idly turns his page. “No. Hush up, Snow. Some of us care about our studies.”

I grin at the back of his head. (He’s got his hair loose, today. The way that looks nice.)

I don’t have to leave Watford. (I’m pretty sure that’s what the Mage meant.) I get to keep having this. All of it. Penny and scones and this thing that isn’t total animosity with Baz.

It’s stuffy up here, but since our truce I’ve been keeping the window open less. I don’t want _that_ to be the thing that wrecks this fragile peace we’ve established. It’s already dark out, so I won’t open the window now, not without the sun’s warmth to temper the cool breeze. And certainly not when Baz is studying.

Baz clears his throat.

I wait for him to speak up, but he just picks up his pen (he writes everything in pen because he knows he won’t make a mistake, the prat) and keeps working.

My eyelids droop. Maybe I’ll just sleep like this, in my jeans and everything. I just fought a Chimaera. I’ve earned it.

Baz clears his throat again, and straightens in his chair.

“Something the matter?” I ask.

“Hush,” he says. And a minute or so later, he turns his head and coughs, softly, into his elbow.

“Maybe you’re getting sick,” I say.

“I don’t get sick,” Baz says.

“Because you’re a vampire?”

“No.”

“Can vampires get sick?”

“Crowley, Snow.”

“That would be a good perk, I mean.”

“Shut up.”

He coughs again, and reaches for his tea.

I stand up. May as well brush my teeth and all, if I’m about to fall asleep. “Don’t get me sick,” I request, and dig around for some pyjamas.

Baz looks at me. “I’m perfectly fine,” he says, and snaps his book shut. He downs the rest of his tea.

I don’t tell him about my talk with the Mage. I’ll tell Penny at breakfast. But for now I just enjoy the mundanity of being here, the familiarity of roommate bickering, and fall asleep to the sound of Baz breathing.

 

*     *     *

 

“He _what?”_ Penny all but shouts, freezing with her fork halfway to her mouth.

I wipe some crumbs off my lips. “I know,” I mumble around a mouthful of scone. Penny grimaces, so I swallow before continuing. “I didn’t think he’d bring it up again. Not after the first time.”

She hits me with the full force of her Concerned Best Friend Eyes and makes my stomach twist. “I’m so sorry, Simon. He should know that you belong here.”

“Yeah, well. I’m here for now.”

She waits a beat. I can see the gears whirring in her mind.

I butter my third scone. “What, Pen?”

She sets down her fork and wrinkles her nose. “Those artefacts,” she says, almost apologetically. “He said _completely_ irreplaceable?”

My mouth is full, so I nod.

She gazes wistfully past the platter of sausages. “What a shame. Who knows what kind of historical value they held.”

I shrug. “If they were really important they would have been somewhere cooler than the Mage’s office.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“They didn’t look all that interesting, either. One was just a flower petal.”

Penny’s expression stays wistful. “I guess we’ll never know.”

 

**BAZ**

Dev’s hand waving in front of my face startles me out of my Simon Snow-induced reverie.

“Mate?” he asks. “You all right?”

My cheeks warm. Thank Crowley for vampirism and my inability to blush. “Fine. Settle down.” I let my mind stay present long enough to make a comment or two in Niall and Dev’s conversation (football, probably?) before I’m swept back up in bronze curls and trailing crumbs.

This truce has tested my patience.

It was one thing to share a room with Simon Snow for years as his enemy who was secretly in love with him.

It’s entirely another to maintain a truce— an _increasingly friendly_ truce— while secretly in love with him. Being civil with him, being polite and unantagonistic (mostly) and actually spending time with him, it all makes it harder to hold back the tidal wave of feelings threatening to spill out. Being his enemy was easy (even when it was hard, which was always.) Being his ally is near impossible.

But Pitches never back down from a challenge.

He looks up from his conversation with Bunce and catches my eye across the dining hall. He grins. That roguish, Simon Snow grin that makes my dead heart hammer.

I fix him with my finest cool stare.

(Only the best for him.)

He looks away first (and I do _not_ mourn the loss of his attention, absolutely not) and Niall refills my tea, bringing me back to my own table.

“Reckon it’s been long enough that I can ask out Wellbelove?” Dev asks.

“Definitely,” says Niall. “It’s been months. She has to be over Snow by now.”

I let myself ignore their inane conversation. Across the room, Simon drags his fingers through his hair and makes a mess of his curls. I want to press my face into them.

“Baz?”

“Hmm?” I say, and sip my tea. My throat tickles again. I cough discreetly behind my hand.

“You sure you’re all right?” asks Niall.

The scratch in my throat persists. I cough again. “Never better,” I tell him, and Simon catches my eye again, mid-laugh. “Really,” I say, and it’s the truth.

 

*     *     *

 

**SIMON**

By the end of the week I stop looking for the Mage around every corner, sure that he’ll march up and order me to pack my bags. I don’t see him at all, and whenever his Men are on the grounds they don’t so much as look at me. So I figure I’m safe. I’m staying put.

I feel safe enough that I let my mind wander in class again, too. (Just a bit. I don’t really want to remind the Mage that my being here was up for debate.)

Miss Possibelf circulates, offering advice and critique. We’re hunting through old text for 8th year project inspiration. (Penny’s nearly finished hers. I’ve no idea what I’m doing.) Behind us, Rhys suggests, laughing, that Gareth try out “ ** _hips don’t lie_** ,” to make use of his magic belt buckle. Penny scoffs. Right in front of Pen and I, Baz sits with Niall and Dev, all idle notetaking and aloofness. He mutters something to Niall, who bursts out laughing and scrambles to cover it, poorly, with a cough.

Miss Possibelf shoots them all a look, and turns back to her inspection of Keris’s work.

Niall’s shoulders keep shaking. Baz elbows him.

Just when he’s about got it under control, Dev slides a piece of paper under Niall’s nose and he snorts.

“Gentlemen,” says Miss Possibelf. “Really.”

“Forgive him,” says Dev. “He’s just got this cough, see.”

I can’t see Baz’s face, but I know from how his head tilts that he’s rolled his eyes.

Niall coughs, unconvincingly, and buries his face in his arms to hide his laughter.

“Very well,” mutters Miss Possibelf. “If you could all take out your books from last— _really,_ Niall? Are you quite all right?”

Niall’s coughing has changed. It keeps going, now, and it sounds a lot realer. He coughs, and coughs, and coughs, leaning over the side of his desk to fold in on himself. He’s not laughing anymore.

Baz raises a pale hand toward him, but a mighty heave from Niall and he pauses, hovers. We’re all watching. Just in case Niall actually hacks up a lung in the middle of class.

He keeps going, until he abruptly stops. He holds a fist to his mouth and goes very still.

“Niall?” asks Miss Possibelf, quietly.

He’s turned just enough that I can see it, clear as day, as he unfolds his hand. For a moment I think it’s blood, but the tiny thing in his palm is light purple. Like a flower petal.

The classroom is silent. Baz startles us all by coughing, softly, himself.

“Gross, mate,” says Dev, and thumps Niall on the back.

Niall grimaces and goes to brush off his hand on his trousers. Miss Possibelf rushes him. Her eyes are very wide.

“Niall,” says. “May I speak to you in the hall, a moment?”

A little unsteady, Niall rises and stalks out into the hall. Miss Possibelf faces us, eyes roving over our faces.

“That will be all for today. Please take care.”

 

*     *     *

 

“ _What_ was that all about?” I wonder aloud, while Penny and I head back toward Mummer’s House.

Pen frowns down at the grass. It’s nice out today, and smells like warm spring rain. The trees are budding. “Did you see Miss Possibelf’s face?” Pen says. “She looked like she’d seen a gost.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve all seen a ghost.”

“You know what I mean,” she says. “She looked spooked.”

I’ve seen Miss Possibelf spooked before. (I have a habit of battling dragons on school property.) But Pen’s right— she looked proper spooked, not just ill-student-concerned.

Pen glances around while we walk, scrutinizing something in our surroundings. It all looks pretty regular for springtime at Watford to me. “It was a flower petal, wasn’t it? That Niall coughed up.”

I shrug. “Looked like it.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Maybe he swallowed it earlier. Wind, or something.”

Penny grabs my arm and holds me still. “But where did the _petal_ come from? Nothing grows that colour around here.”

She points around, and sure enough I don’t spot any light purple flowers conveniently growing in our surrounding area. “Sure, Pen. Seems like a lot to get worked up over.”

“ _Exactly._ So there’s more to it. Miss Possibelf knows. We should have followed her.”

“Really? For a petal?”

Penny looks me in the eye. She bites her lip like she does when she’s working hard on something. “I know it doesn’t sound like much,” she says. “But I have a strange feeling.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned at Watford School of Magicks, it’s to trust Penny always, without question.

I nod. “Should we hit the library, then?”

Penny thinks. She adjusts her glasses.

“No. I wouldn’t even know what to look for.” She sets off again for Mummer’s. “Just keep your eye out, okay?”

And I figure that’s that.

 

*     *     *

 

But of course, it’s not.

At breakfast the next morning, Niall’s fit starts back up, and he spits out tiny purple petals all over the floor. Loads of them. They spray out of his mouth and flutter to the stone like confetti. Miss Possibelf pulls him up by the shoulders and drags him away, and we don’t see him for the rest of the day.

And then Penny tells me that a sixth year girl who lives the floor below her coughed up little white petals, long and droopy like daisies, all over the stairs on her way down to class.

We head straight to the library as soon as we have a moment free.

“Here,” Penny says, dropping down a tower of books each thick as my arm. The table shudders under their weight. “You start on these while I go pull some more.”

I grab a book off the top of the pile and get to it. I’ve scoured this book for answers before. These are the usual suspects in our spell-breaking projects.

“What kind of spell would that even be, anyway?” I ask, an hour or so later.

Penny shrugs, not looking up from her book. “Could be a number of things. **_Everything’s coming up roses_**? **_Flowery speech_**? **_Oopsy-daisy_**? Who knows. Keep reading.”

I do. We read.

And read and read.

But supper ticks closer and closer and we find absolutely nothing.

I close the book I’m on and shove it away from me. “I’m starving. And we’re not getting anywhere.”

Pen looks morose, but she shuts her book too. “Honestly? I feel exactly the same. Let’s go eat.”

And halfway through her meal Penny’s fork clatters to her plate and she whips to face me, startling me with a mouthful of potatoes.

“We’re going about this all wrong!” she says.

Baz looks up, across the dining hall. He raises an eyebrow at me. Maybe he has an idea about all this.

“Simon! It’s not a spell— at least, I don’t think it is.”

I meet her eyes. “Yeah?”

She shakes her head, with that bright-eyed look she gets when Baz debates with her in class. “Yeah. The _coughing._ That’s what it is. I think it’s a sickness.”

“A sickness? Niall and that girl have a wicked cold with a side-effect of flower petals?”

“Oh, eat up, Simon. We need to get back to the library.”

 

*     *     *

 

The next book stack is taller than the first. And older, and dustier.

I heave open the first one, which I’d bet was written by Merlin himself on ye olde parchment. It looks to be some sort of medical text, but it still refers to blood as one of the humors.

Dust tickles my nose. “Pen? I think this book is a bit out of date.” And it just might come apart under my fingers if I’m not careful.

Penny rolls her eyes. “I’m aware. Get to work.”

 _She_ sits down with a glossy copy of the Modern Mage’s Guide to Maladies, Unabridged Second Edition, and delights in being the first to crack the pristine spine.

I glower a little. “Really?”

But mine does seem to be at least a little more interesting, so I set to work.

And as it turns out, my ancient book has our answer.

“Pen,” I say, and point. “Here.”

It’s downright medieval looking picture, probably hand painted. (Really, this has got to be the oldest book at Watford.) But it depicts a man bent over a bowl, vomiting red flowers.

Penny scans the text and immediately reaches for a different book in the middle of her pile. She flips through it, muttering, and then lays it open to a page with a similar (if more recent-looking) image, of a woman spitting flowers into her hands.

“ _Unusual and scarcely-documented phenomenon…”_ Penny reads, eyes whizzing over the page. “ _Cause unknown, origin unknown… no studies have been conducted… very few known cases…”_

“Pen?”

“Shh. _Referred to colloquially as Hanahaki Disease. A mysterious and highly dangerous magical affliction. Affected individuals suffer from flowering plant growth in the lungs and chest cavity, culminating in eventual suffocation and death. Though not proven, it is believed that those vulnerable to the ‘disease’ suffer from unrequited love.”_

There’s silence as Penny rereads the passage and the words sink into my mind.

“Well, that can’t be right,” I say. “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s no way that’s real.”

Penny nods a little. But then she opens another book, and another, and a third, until she spreads out a whole tapestry of the Watford library’s medical information, with picture after picture of flowers spilling from peoples’ mouths.

“I agree with you,” Penny murmurs. “It’s completely bizarre. But I think it’s real.”

Over and over, the pages read _growth in the lungs,_ and _suffocation_ and _unrequited love._

It’s bonkers. It’s completely bloody mad.

(Of all the things that can kill a mage— chimaeras and dragons and evil vampires, for starters— _unrequited love?_ )

But if it’s real, and these books are correct, then Niall and that sixth year girl are in grave danger.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the support so far!!!!! I really appreciate it! 
> 
> Here we go....

**BAZ**

 

I haven’t been to Watford’s infirmary since Snow broke my nose a few years back. It’s in a rather lovely old building, and oddly pleasant, with big windows and crisp white curtains between the beds. There aren’t many beds. Being a magic school and all, I doubt they often have a need to keep students overnight. Just when a few “ ** _get well soon_** ”s won’t do the trick.

They aren’t helping now.

Since his incident at breakfast, Niall’s been relegated to the infirmary to wait out treatment. Only no one seems to know what the fuck is the matter with him. Miss Possibelf has been in and out, speaking in hushed tones to the nurse and looking more irate than I’ve ever seen her. (And I’ve seen her coated head to toe in soot after Simon went off in class, second year.)

“When did the, er, symptoms begin?” asks the nurse, an unfairly freckled man whose name I was told but who was too attractive for me to hear on the first go around.

(I’m not even sure if he’s actually that attractive. But with his curly hair (though too brown,) speckled skin (though too pale,) and blue eyes (too icy, but behind very handsome glasses) I have to concede that he is nearly exactly my type. And a friendly, tall medical professional with an easy laugh, no less.)

Niall glowers. He slouches on his designated sickbed with his arms crossed and huffs.

“Yesterday, I suppose. In class. Like Miss Possibelf said.” He coughs again, and a hearty spray of petals falls all over Dev, standing uncomfortably next to me.

The nurse gives a wry smile. “Do you have any discomfort? In general, or when the… flowers appear?”

Niall shrugs. “I mean, flower petals in the airway isn’t really a picnic, right? But it’s not too bad.”

“Have you attempted any floral spells recently?”

“ _Floral_ spells?” Dev echoes.

The nurse shrugs. “Spells of a floral nature, or any magic pertaining to gardening or horticulture?”

Dev snorts.

( _Are_ there spells of floral nature? **_Gilding the lily_** , maybe. Or **_April showers_**.)

“Yeah,” Niall deadpans. “I was trying to perk up my begonias and gave myself petal-lung instead.”

( ** _Pushing daisies_**. **_A rose by any other name_**.)

Niall shudders. The nurse leaps for a bowl and holds it before Niall’s mouth just in time to catch a whole mess of petals. He keeps it there until Niall’s coughs subside. The whole curve of the bowl is painted lilac.

The nurse peers into the bowl curiously and puts something down on his clipboard. “Well, I can’t say anything for certain. I’ll look into what this could be, and in the meantime we’ll keep you here and make sure it doesn’t worsen.”

Niall slumps. Dev claps a hand on his shoulder sympathetically.

The nurse adjusts his glasses. “Your teacher has a theory I’ll consider, but I have to say it’s not very likely.” He glances at Dev and I. “It’s good of your friends to be here with you.” With a casual tap of his hand against the metal frame at the foot of the bed, the nurse heads off.

Niall runs his tongue over his teeth and slouches further down onto the thin mattress, glum as I’ve ever seen him.

“It’s not so bad,” Dev tries. “You’ll probably be excused from homework.”

Niall rolls his eyes. “If one of you gits did this to me with a haywire spell, you’d better fucking find a way to fix it. I don’t fancy being stuck in here for ages.”

“I wonder what Miss Possibelf’s theory is,” I say. And why I haven’t thought of it as well. Maybe Bunce has an idea.

My throat scratches again. (Persistent, it is. And irksome.) I fight down a cough for a minute until I can’t any longer.

“Be careful,” Niall warns. “If you’ve got any flowers in there, keep them down. Or end up stuck here too.”

 

* * *

 

Snow and Bunce barge into Mummer’s tower with half the contents of the Watford library.

“Oh, good,” says Snow from around his teetering stack, “you’re here.”

A year ago those words would have dripped with sarcasm. Today he’s serious. It’s a lovely development.

“I was under the impression you knew how to read,” I reply, because him being nice does not necesitate _my_ being nice. We have a balance to maintain. “I can’t see how you could possibly need me for whatever mystery you’ve decided to solve this time.”

Bunce dumps her stack all over my bed. (I really need to set some firmer boundaries with these two. Bunce in particular is getting far too cozy with me.)

“You can’t keep your books on my bed.”

“Don’t be a pain, Basil,” says Bunce, and beckons me over. She flips open three volumes and jabs at the pages with her finger. “Come look.”

Snow deposits his haul on his desk and joins us, scratching the back of his neck and mouth-breathing as always and generally being delectable. I ignore him.

“It’s not very promising,” says Bunce. “But it’s the one and only explanation we were able to find.”

They’re books on health, I realize. Everything from medical texts to magical home remedy books to compendiums of magical ailments. The pages they’re showing me all depict similar images, of hunched-over people and great quantities of little flowers.

Snow notices I’ve raised my eyebrow and explains before I even have a chance to ask my question.

“Niall’s not the only one,” he says. “There’s a girl in the Cloisters, too.”

So Snow is trying to be the hero of the people again. I shouldn’t be surprised.

I read further, about the ill-researched so-called disease that, for something so poorly documented, is consistent across centuries and continents. My eyes stop on two words. They’re present in each book.

“That’s the thing,” says Simon, reading my mind again. “It seems far-fetched, doesn’t it? The unrequited love thing?”

It doesn’t seem far-fetched to me. Not in the world of magic.

It _does_ seem a little on-the-nose.

My throat picks that moment to tickle again, a cough threatening, but I stifle it down and will my breath steady. Crowley, this place needs a dusting.

 _I’m_ not the one with it, I remind myself. Niall. Niall is spewing little pale purple flowers all over the place.

I reread the paragraph in the most reputable-looking of the books. It’s stated clearly. All documented cases, it says. The common factor is unrequited love.

Bunce and Snow watch me, waiting for my response.

“You think Niall is dealing with unrequited love?”

Snow shrugs. (Shrugs make up about forty percent of his vocabulary.) “Couldn’t he be?”

Happens to the best of us, I suppose.

“I wouldn’t know,” I tell him. “I can’t say it’s impossible.”

“There’s a lot of speculation here,” Bunce says, gesturing broadly. “But it’s the prognosis we’re afraid of, if this is indeed what’s going on.”

 _Suffocation,_ it says. _Death._

My best friend could be killed by flower petals.

It doesn’t seem like something within the realm of possibility. Not when Niall is petulantly glooming about in an infirmary bed, begging Dev and I to hang out with him and spitting out bits of flora and sarcastic comments.

“Is it contagious?” I ask.

“Is that a concern?” asks Bunce, staring.

 _Yes._ “Yes. This is a large school with a significant population. Surely someone else is at risk.”

Snow nods idly at my statement, but Bunce continues to eye me. I school my expression. Let her seek for answers on my face. She won’t find any.

“As well,” I say coolly, “has any of your research turned up a cure?”

Bunce shakes her head. “Not really.”

Simon turns to her, incredulous. “Yes, it has. It’s in two of these books, somewhere.”

“That was hardly a _cure_ though, was it? Just a solution.”

“It’s the same, isn’t it?”

These two. Honestly. “What are you talking about, Snow?” I ask.

“It makes sense, really,” he says, heading to his own bed and flopping down on it. Then, as if it’s that simple: “Take away the unrequited love.”

I could laugh. (Or cry.) Would that I could, Snow.

“Oh?” I respond. “And how do you presume to do that?”

He shrugs again, staring up at the ceiling. “Two ways. Either requite the love— requite? Is that a word?”

“Yes,” Bunce and I say.

“Either the love gets returned, or the person falls out of love. There, no more unrequited love, so no more throwing up flowers.”

He says it like it’s easy. Like I haven’t wished every day for three years that there were some way to just stop loving someone.

Niall might be in real trouble. (Also, who is he in love with?)

“We need to speak with someone,” I tell them. “The nurse. The Mage. They need to know.”

Snow nods. “Pen thinks Miss Possibelf’s got it figured out.”

Ah. This would explain her frightened severity.

“It’s late,” says Bunce. “We’ll do it in the morning.”

We settle in, Snow and Bunce sprawled on his bed and me at my desk, and select a stack of books each. I’m unnervingly soothed by the repetitive sounds of page turning and Snow’s breathing.

We spend the rest of the evening scouring the books for evidence of genuinely cured cases.

We don’t find any.

I sip a tea and will away my cough.

 

* * *

 

**SIMON**

 

By the time we talk to Miss Possibelf, there are two more students in the infirmary. The girl that Penny saw and someone else.

“I agree with you,” Miss Possibelf says. “I think you three are exactly right. I’ve told Nurse Ramjam and he has agreed to work under the assumption that that is the case.”

“Does the Mage know?” I ask. Baz shifts.

“The Mage is not here,” says Miss Possibelf. “I’ve contacted him.”

I want to cry ‘what do you _mean_ he’s not here?’ but by now I’m not surprised. He never seems to be, when we need him. At least there’s Miss Possibelf.

“What will happen next?” Baz asks. “Is there a treatment plan?”

“We looked into it,” says Penny, “but there don’t seem to be records of cured cases.”

Miss Possibelf nods grimly. “We’ve been in contact with the Coven. They’re sending some doctors. I’m afraid that’s all I can say for student confidentiality purposes.”

“Is it contagious?” Penny asks. “If there are three sick so far, will there be more?”

Miss Possibelf presses her lips together in a thin line. Her voice sounds tense. “I don’t think the students themselves are contagious.”

It feels like there’s more to her sentiment, but she doesn’t continue.

Baz narrows his eyes.

“What do you mean?” asks Penny.

Baz tilts his head a little. “Do you think that the school population is vulnerable to the disease in another way?”

Miss Possibelf nods. “There’s no way to be sure. But yes, I do.”

Penny twists her ring around her finger. “Miss Possibelf, do you think that there is a cure? Will Niall and the others be all right?”

Miss Possibelf’s expression falters. “If there is one, we’ll find it.”

 

* * *

 

Somehow, despite the imminent threat over the heads of three of our classmates, school carries on as usual.

(I guess they’re all pretty used to threats, around here. I sure am.)

No one else joins the three students already in the infirmary as the days stretch on. Soon, nearly a week has gone by since Niall coughed up the first petal in class. A gaggle of doctors have taken up residence with Nurse Ramjam in the medical quarters, and we’re told they are working night and day to either find or invent a cure.

Baz and Dev visit Niall daily. Each evening, Baz tells me of how Niall coughs up more and more petals. One day, he tells me there was a leaf in with the petals. The next, they came in more than one colour. The flowers are growing. But he breathes just fine, it seems. For now.

There’s a football match on Saturday. I almost forgot what going to Watford football matches was like. I never really went when Baz was missing (no need to make sure he wasn’t up to something evil if I knew he wasn’t there) and then he came back halfway through term with an injured leg, not in any shape to play.

I know why he was missing now. He told me, all of us actually, over Christmas when Penny and Aggie and I were at his house. (Doing our usual “Scooby gang” thing, as he put it.) Kidnapped by numpties, he said. Kept in a coffin and starved for weeks, long enough by far to miss his mother’s Visiting. He gets a scraped, empty look when he talks about it. It’s part of why I’ve been trying to piss him off less. That, and I like how things are when we’re not at each other’s throats.

The leg is getting better, slowly but surely, and even at his worst Baz is still a great player. So Coach Mac has started putting him back out during matches, just only if they’re getting to the end and really need to cinch a win. I know Baz would rather be out there playing all the time. It grates on him, being sidelined, but at least it’s something.

And it means I’m back at football matches, too.

Penny even comes with me, for the first time since about fifth year.

I’m almost certain that Baz isn’t plotting anything at these matches. But I like to keep eyes on him anyway. He’s a spectacular player.

This match is terrible, though. We’ve been sitting out in pissing rain for ages, watching the teams slosh about in thick mud and freezing our arses off. The team is losing, Baz hasn’t stepped foot on the pitch once, and Penny’s teeth are chattering.

“I’m not coming to these things anymore,” she mutters.

I can’t blame her.

Finally, Coach Mac shouts off to the sides and puts Baz in. His hair’s up in a bun, and streams of rain slick escaped strands to his neck. The whistle blows, and they’re off with Baz weaving fluidly through mud-caked bodies.

He’s brilliant to watch. He’s a ruthless player, and moves like you wouldn’t believe. His leg’s slowed him down some, but it hardly matters.

Coach Mac checks in with him as he wipes rain from his eyes and gives his leg a quick stretch. I’m too far to hear what they say, but Baz nods, brushes him off, coughs a bit and shakes out his limbs. Then he’s off again, charging up the pitch with grace.

Singlehandedly, Baz ties up the score. The rain’s bucketing down. Just a few miserable minutes to go.

He gets the ball up toward the goal and then shocks us all by passing it off instead of taking the shot himself. I lean forward on the bench as Baz turns away from play. He hunches over, hands on his knees, shaking. The game continues around him, like nobody notices something’s happening.

Then someone runs into him and knocks him down. A whistle blows, Coach Mac shouts, and heads turn to see Baz Pitch on his hands and knees in the mud.

“What’s happening?” Pen whispers. I’m already on my feet, looking for the quickest way to get to him. Rain runs down my neck.

Coach Mac crouches beside Baz, puts a hand on his back. Baz shrugs him off.

The stands are too full and I’m too high up. I’ll have to leap over people to get down there.

Penny snatches my wrist. “ _Simon_ ,” she says.

There isn’t time. I watch as Baz falters. A muddy hand grips the front of his shirt then splashes back down. He heaves.

I’m frozen to the spot as petals pour from his mouth.

 

**BAZ**

 

Petals, everywhere.

They’re palest pink, wide and curved like seashells.

Raindrops pool in them, press them into the mud.

They flutter over my hands, soft as breaths, and still more and more come.

My throat burns. The huge, hacking coughs wrack me mercilessly, unstoppable, make my stomach clench and my arms shake. Rain streams into my eyes. The petals keep coming, choking me, filling my windpipe, so I can’t inhale. Just cough and cough as petals fall from my lips.

Of course. Of course. It was only a matter of time.

Coach Mac is somewhere, but it’s someone else’s hands that touch me. Too warm to be anyone but Simon, who has no idea it’s his bloody fault that I’m coughing my guts out in the mud. His fingers wipe my hair back from my forehead, keep the rainwater from my eyes, my mouth.

“Shit, Baz,” he’s saying. “Fucking hell. Breathe, Baz. Can you breathe? Of course you can’t, fuck.” There’s a weight across my shoulders that can only be his arm. Simon Snow is holding me. “Fuck. Get them out so you can breathe. Come on, now.”

I do as he says. There’s no way to stop them, now that they’ve started.

They’re peony petals, I realize idly. Daphne loves them. She has them for events whenever possible.

I manage a wrenching, gasping breath in. And then another, and another. My arms nearly give out, but Simon holds me up. I spit out one last mouthful of petals.

I’m freezing. I’m shaking. I’m spent. I could collapse right into this mud puddle, surrounded by petals that grew in my lungs, and let the rain and my excruciating love for Simon Snow just take me.

Against my better judgement, I push myself to my feet. Simon, sputtering, follows.

I stumble, but he throws an arm around me.

“Get off me,” I sneer, but it comes out weak and horrifically hoarse. Simon glares at me and tightens his hold. He keeps me upright as we’re swarmed by teachers. He lets me lean on him all the way to the infirmary. He only leaves once we’re there to go and fetch me dry clothes from our room.

I always knew Simon Snow would be the death of me.

I didn’t think it’d be this way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did about two minutes of medical research to get some appropriate terminology for this part, and it's totally possible that they're nonsense or that I'm using them incorrectly. If you are able to correct me please do so! That said, they sure sound cool.

SIMON

 

I’m lying on my bed with my feet kicked up the wall when Penny storms in.

“What did Dr Wellbelove say?” I ask, not looking up.

She drops onto Baz’s bed. He’ll kill her when he finds out, but it’s been two days and I don’t like seeing his bed this empty again. It feels like September all over. Except that now students are required to inform a faculty member if they experience any coughing or shortness of breath, and are encouraged to report anyone who they’ve witnessed coughing. Rumours fly nonstop about the people already infected, and who it is that they love enough to fall ill from it. And the sick students’ families have made daily visits, demanding progress of the doctors.

“It’s definitely Hanahaki,” Penny says. “They’re all in agreement.”

Maybe it’s just because we already knew the answer, but I don’t feel any different when she confirms it. Maybe it still feels too fairytale. Maybe part of me still just doesn’t really believe it.

“Any progress on the cure?” I ask.

“Not that I know of. We can ask Baz, though.”

“Speaking of.” I swing my legs down and shove my feet into my trainers. “Ready?”

Agatha meets us outside, as usual. “This is so distressing,” she says.

I’m glad she’s been coming with us. It’s been nice getting back to normal with her, as friends.

(There was a time just after Baz got sick that I wondered why I wasn’t, too. Because a little part of me still thought that deep down I loved Agatha. It’s been reassuring, finding out that I don’t.)

The great lawn is dotted with cheerful spring blooms. None like the great big ones of Baz’s, more like Niall’s teeny ones. They crumple underfoot. Buttercups smear yellow on my shoes.

Baz is in his usual position when we arrive, cross-legged on his bed and hunched over an enormous book, narrowed eyes scanning quickly through the text. Niall, in the bed next to his, is lounging, playing a game of some kind on his mobile. (The Mage isn’t here to reprimand him. And what else could he be expected to do, shut up in here for days on end?)

Baz looks up as we approach, face cool and impassive.

He didn’t so much as glance at us the first time we arrived to visit him. But I’ve taken to bringing him tea from the dining hall, because he doesn’t like the paper cups in the infirmary, so now he does his best to act as though he’s not looking forward to our company.

“Much obliged, Snow,” he says, as I pass him the mug. (Loaded with milk and sugar. He has a monstrous sweet tooth, not that he’d admit it.)

“How are you feeling today?” asks Penny, perching on the neighbouring empty bed. Agatha settles herself on the chair at Baz’s side.

“Quite fine,” Baz says. He sips his tea, and his eyes slip shut blissfully for a moment before he puts his mask back on. “Have I missed much in class?”

Because of course that’s what matters right now.

I’ve been bringing him tea, and Penny’s been bringing him her notes. He and the rest of the sick students have been excused from anything and everything that goes on in class these days, but Baz won’t let a potentially life-threatening condition rob him of his spot at the top of the class. And if there’s one thing Penny can sympathize with it’s the desire to excel academically.

Baz skims Pen’s notes, idly sipping his tea and furrowing his brow every so often at something he reads. He doesn’t look sick. He looks fit as ever— hair loosely raked back and eyes sharp and calculating. He’s dressed more casually than usual (I brought him his clothes— he requested proper trousers and his uniform shirts and everything, but he’s in the infirmary for Merlin’s sake so I brought trackies and T shirts and jumpers, and one pair of jeans I came across in his drawer that felt so soft I figured they had to be comfortable.) He makes homework in the infirmary look handsome, somehow, and it’s honestly really unfair of him. Niall looks all pale and tired. But I guess Niall’s been sick longer.

“Really, though?” Agatha asks, after Baz has had a short minute to read. “You feel all right?”

He gives her a look. “It’s just my lungs. So far I’ve hardly noticed it.”

“That’s bollocks,” chirps Niall, from Baz’s other side. “You had a proper fit right before this lot got here.”

“Speak for yourself,” Baz mutters. And on cue, Niall lets loose a deep, gouging cough and spits purple and blue petals into the bowl at his bedside.

Baz has one too, I notice. Full of petals in varying states from wilting to shrivelled, like very morbid potpourri. All big, and so light pink they’re nearly white.

“You should be resting,” I say when Baz turns back to Penny’s notes. I know as the words come out that they’re useless, and I can see Baz’s hard stare before he makes it.

“I’m not letting Bunce get ahead of me just because of some flowers,” he says. “When I’m out of here, I intend to be perfectly caught up on my coursework.”

The quiet after his words creeps over us like a raincloud.

Baz sighs and tucks the notes away, next to the bowl on his table. “Before you ask, no. There’s nothing yet.”

“Haven’t the doctors said anything?” Penny asks. “Dr Wellbelove said they spoke to you all this morning.”

Baz says nothing. If I were anyone other than his long-time roommate I wouldn’t notice the faint hint of colour on his cheeks that marks the extent of a vampire’s ability to blush.

“Baz?” I prompt.

Baz cups his tea in both hands. “They came to collect background data on each of us,” he says, voice clipped. “To aid in their research.”

Niall, listening in, has turned pink, too.

“Background data?” I repeat. Penny frowns.

Niall sets his mobile down. “It means they interrogated us about everyone we’ve ever fancied,” he says.

Baz hasn’t talked about that part. The love thing. I think he’d skin us if we brought it up.

Agatha, I can’t help but notice, looks interested.

“Oh,” Penny says. “How come? Just to add insult to injury?”

“They believe the disease has a psychological component,” Baz says. “The distinction is _perceived_ unrequited love, apparently.”

“So they’re trying to find out if anyone out there could come and declare their undying love for us,” Niall gripes. “Because _that’s_ the best idea they’ve got.”

“Nicks and Slick,” Penny mutters.

“What’s their plan, then?” I muse. “Go up to students and demand they come and confess to you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Baz. “I don’t think they got any useful information out of any of us.”

Fair enough, I suppose. Hardly the sort of environment you want to bare your soul in.

“At least it’s something,” Agatha says. “Wouldn’t it be worth finding out if this could all be over?”

Niall and Baz don’t look at her.

“If it worked, you could be back to normal _and_ in love. Why not take the chance?”

Baz clenches his jaw and keeps staring into his tea, but Niall crosses his arms and scoffs.

“Yeah, and what if they don’t? Then we’re sick _and_ humiliated. Pass.”

“But what if they _do?_ ” Agatha presses.

Niall’s brow furrows. “Don’t you think if they felt the same that they’d be in here too? Isn’t that how it works?”

“Maybe they don’t realize it. Or maybe they already think you feel the same—”

“Please,” says Baz, his voice clipped. “Give it a rest, Wellbelove.”

Agatha’s brown eyes are bright and burning. “If you could just tell us who,” she says, “we could help.”

“It’s not that simple,” Baz snaps.

“It really is,” says Agatha.

“Aggie,” I say, and Baz’s eyes flick up to me. “Just leave it.”

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking about whether Baz has been flirting with Agatha, trying to break us up. We’ve been broken up now for months, but any interest Baz used to show in her disappeared when he returned in October. I don’t think it’s her. I don’t even think that Aggie even really wants it to be her— I think she just wants to _know._

So do I.

I’ve never considered the idea of Baz having feelings for someone other than Agatha, and even that always seemed to be mostly to anger me.

I can’t think of a single person at Watford who Baz might be interested in. He seems so… _above._ Like no one even comes close to touching him.

Maybe someone out of Watford, then. Some beautiful posh girl from the club, who could match his wit, his intellect, his poise.

I muse aloud to Penny and Agatha while we walk back, later.

“Who do you think Baz is in love with?”

Penny hums, looking up at the purpling sky.

“I mean, I was sure it was Aggie, before,” I add, and she turns faintly pink. “But— sorry Ags— I don’t think that’s it.”

Penny looks at me then, with narrowed eyes.

“I just think it’s bizarre,” says Agatha. “This is a matter of _health._ What could be so terrible about telling someone you love them if it might make you better?”

Penny twists her ring around her finger, over and over.

“What, Pen?” I ask her. “You’re thinking.”

She nods. “Yes.” And that’s all she says on the matter.

 

* * *

 

When we next arrive at the infirmary, it’s a terrifying flurry of doctors, voices, beeping sounds, and petals.

Nurse Ramjam stops us at the door. Over his arm, I watch three doctors moving quickly over Niall’s bed.

“What’s happening?” asks Penny.

“Is Niall okay?” asks Agatha.

“Where’s Baz?” I ask, because his bed is empty.

“This is a bad time,” says Nurse Ramjam. “Please come back later—”

Baz stumbles out from behind the wall of doctors, holding Niall’s bowl and flecked with colourful petals. He shudders, and the bowl crashes to the floor, sending petals flying. I duck under the nurse’s arm and hurry to him while voices shout for me to get out.

Just like that day on the pitch, I put an arm around Baz and hold him up while he coughs. He coughs into his hands, desperately trying to keep the petals contained, but they spill from his fingers and flutter down to join Niall’s. A doctor rushes by, nearly bowling over us, so I guide him back toward his bed.

He gasps for breath when the petals subside. And his hands shake.

“He’s stable,” shouts Dr Wellbelove, and the frenzy around Niall calms.

“ ** _Spic and span_** ,” another says, and the petals on the floor vanish.

As the crowd clears, I get a good look at Niall limp on his bed. They’ve hooked him up to a Normal monitor of some kind, beeping in time to his heartbeat, and there’s a plastic mask over his nose and mouth, hazy from his breath. An errant petal sticks to the inside.

“What happened?” I whisper.

Baz’s voice is hoarse and gravelly. “He had another fit, and he couldn’t stop coughing. Petals started choking him.”

Dr Wellbelove presses a stethoscope to each side of Niall’s chest, listening to his lungs as he breathes.

“Dad? Is he okay?” asks Agatha. Nurse Ramjam has let her and Penny in, now.

Dr Wellbelove gives her a grim smile. “He’s been better, that’s for sure.”

I realize I’m sitting on Baz’s bed, next to him. His arm is pressed along mine, too out of breath to notice I’m sure. I can’t look away from Niall. He takes short little breaths, like he’s panting, and his skin is ghastly pale. He’s greyer than Baz.

Agatha pulls out her mobile. “Dev was going to come later,” she explains. “I’ll tell him to come now.”

“Actually,” says Dr Wellbelove, glancing between his patients. “We have a… treatment option to discuss with you. I’m not sure if you’d like your friends here for it.”

“You’ve found something?” asks Penny. Baz glances up sharply. He’s still out of breath.

“We have,” says Dr Wellbelove. “My colleagues are informing the other two students.” He gestures to the far end of the infirmary, where the other doctors are standing over the two other occupied beds. “So, Niall and Basilton, if you’d like to do this privately we can invite your visitors back at a later time.”

Niall just shrugs, pressing a hand to the breathing mask. He looks bone weary.

Baz, after a moment, shakes his head. “They’ll find out anyway. Just tell us.”

Dr Wellbelove raises his eyebrows, but does as requested. “We’ve found a record of a surgical option,” he explains. “Removing the plant growth by the roots in a sleeve resection, via intercostal thoracotomy. It is a highly invasive surgery and the recovery would be unpleasant.”

“Wouldn’t have guessed,” Baz mutters, hoarse.

“As far as we’re aware,” the Doctor continues, “this procedure is completely effective. The Hanahaki growth can be entirely removed with no chance of return. The only complication is that removing the growth is shown to also remove the associated feelings.”

“What?” I say.

“You mean—” begins Baz.

“I mean that the disease would be gone from your system, but so would any romantic feelings toward whoever is the object of your unrequited love.”

Beside me, Baz goes completely still.

“For added context,” Dr Wellbelove goes on, “as of right now your prognoses, both of yours, are…”

“Bleak,” says Baz. My stomach drops.

“Sub-optimal,” says Dr Wellbelove.

“How long?” asks Baz.

This is all happening so fast.

“Niall’s case, though the flowers are smaller, blossomed quickly and has continued to grow and pervade more and more of the lung. Yours, Basilton, took much longer to grow its buds, but they have bloomed very large. Neither of you is in for a pleasant experience. The next few days will be indicative of how much longer your lungs can withstand the disease.”

Niall shuts his eyes. The hand pressed to his breathing mask trembles.

“There’s no need to make a decision now,” says Dr Wellbelove. “I’ll leave you with your friends.”

 

BAZ

 

I let out a thin, wheezing breath as Dr Wellbelove goes. Bunce and Wellbelove look stricken, standing there frozen between my bed and Niall’s.

Snow hasn’t gotten off my bed. I’m not sure he’s realized. I won’t ask him to leave, though. Not after that.

They all start whispering, hissing madly at each other about what they think of the treatment option. I can’t hear what they’re saying.

It terrifies me.

Not the surgery, that much would be fine. Dr Wellbelove is aware of my vampirism, and with my father breathing down his neck as he has been all week I’m sure I’d be the best cared-for patient in the country.

For some reason, it’s the other part.

I’ve longed— _yearned_ — for _years_ for some way to make my feelings for Simon Snow disappear. I’d have given anything to have some miracle cure to let me hate him properly so we can go on being good nemeses like we’re supposed to. My whole time at Watford would have been so much simpler if I wasn’t in love with my bloody roommate. Simon fucking Snow. The Mage’s heir.

But none of that changes the fact that I love him.

(I absolutely hate him and would push him down the stairs again without question, but dammit, Crowley, I love him.)

And I’ve loved him for so long that I can’t imagine stopping.

My life is one long tragedy. Loving Simon Snow is an intrinsic part of it. Maybe it’s masochism. Maybe it’s self-loathing. But as much as I want to not be tormented by his presence, I don’t want to stop loving him. I’ve long since accepted my imminent death (I’d have preferred by his sword, but I’ll take what I’m dealt) and I’ll do it loving Simon Snow, thank you very much.

Maybe he’ll sit at my side, like this, while I die. Maybe I’ll tell him it’s his fault. Maybe I’ll have enough breath in me to drag him down by his rumpled Watford tie and kiss him before I go. That would be fitting, I think.

“Baz?”

Snow saying my name startles me.

“You’ve been quiet,” he says.

“I don’t think I’ll do it,” I whisper. “The surgery.”

Niall has sat up, I realize. He holds his mask in one hand and moves it off his mouth so he can speak.

“I might,” he says. “If they haven’t found a cure by now, I’m not sure they will.”

“Baz,” Snow whispers. I look at him, and the force of his blue eyes this close up nearly makes me gasp. (Lucky for me, I’ve been short of breath all day. It won’t be out of the ordinary.) His concerned frown is too much for my heart to handle. “What do you mean?”

I don’t have an answer for him. I meant what I said.

“If they find a cure I’ll take it,” I say. “But not this.”

Simon’s eyes move back and forth between mine. He’s so golden. I want to know what his cheeks feel like under my lips.

Bunce takes a step nearer to me. “We’ll find something,” she promises. “It’s out there, I’m sure.”

“Think about it, won’t you?” says Niall. “There’s time. If you get worse, you could change your mind.”

I nod. I could.

But Snow’s arm is warm on mine. He reaches over to the books on my bedside table and flips one open to my bookmark. He sets it on the bed before us and continues his search for a cure.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE  
> I had a crazy week so this (admittedly short) chapter took longer than anticipated. I meant for this chapter to contain the next couple scenes as well, but I decided to get a short update out rather than continue to wait! I'm thinking there will be two more chapters, ish. They should be coming much quicker than this one did.  
> If you want something else to fill your time while this is still in progress, I have a handful of other snowbaz fics that you may enjoy!   
> Thanks for your continued support, everyone!!

BAZ

 

The other two opt for the surgery, apparently.

The sixth-year girl and the seventh-year boy get carted out the very next day to be sent to a private magical surgical suite in London.

My father and step-mother berate me for not accepting the treatment. Father tells me I’m being foolish. Daphne begs me to make a good choice for my longevity.

They make me swear that, if it comes down to the line, I will go through with the surgery. They forbid me from dying of a “stupid, fairytale disease” in the name of my own “adolescent anguish.”

My friends (I have reluctantly conceded that Snow, Bunce, and Wellbelove are, against all odds, my friends) give sighs of relief when I inform them. I worried briefly that the news would slow their search of a cure, but they haven’t let up.

Niall is the only one who can truly sympathize with me. We haven’t talked about it— about our mortality or our unrequited love or any of it— but we know what the other is going through. He can understand my reluctance to have the surgery.

Bunce and Wellbelove adopt Dev into their team, and take to combing the library whenever they leave my bedside. They say that the amount of books we need to look through can’t feasibly be brought to the infirmary so we can do it as a group.

Simon never leaves me, though.

As the days pass by, he spends more and more of his waking hours with me. (And several of his sleeping hours, too.)

He comes to see me the moment his last class ends, and only leaves to bring us both back a good supper from the dining hall. (The nurse does this for me, otherwise, but Snow knows my preferences. He always brings me exactly what he knows I would choose for myself.) Sometimes, when we research well into the night, he dozes right off in the chair next to my bed, or, on the best nights, on my bed with me.

He sits at the foot of my bed and leans against the rail. He winds up sprawled on his stomach and dozes off with his cheek stuck to his book. I wake him inadvertently when I inevitably start coughing, and then he bids me goodnight and heads back to our room alone.

He hasn’t asked who I’m in love with, and I’m grateful for it.

Wellbelove continues to harass me about it, and he always looks vaguely interested in the subject, but he never speaks on it himself. I don’t know what I would do if he looked me in the eye and asked who I love.

Meanwhile, Niall gets worse and worse. (I do my best to ignore that I do, too.)

He only takes off his oxygen mask to eat, and sometimes even that is too much. The doctors check on him dozens of times each day. And gradually, his ability to speak starts to decline.

I have a mask and an oxygen tank, too, on stand-by at my bedside. I haven’t needed it yet, but Dr Wellbelove tells me with a firm gaze that I should prepare myself “for that eventuality.”

Niall sets a surgery time, a few days off.

And then, a couple days before, he finally gives in to Wellbelove.

“Don’t go in,” Agatha hisses, grabbing my arm on my way back from the supply closet the nurse dares to call a kitchen. (Dr Wellbelove has the mini-fridge stocked with blood for me.) “Wait.”

Bunce and Snow stand behind her, heads tilted toward the closed door between us and the ward.

“What on earth are you—”

“Shh!” Bunce cuts me off, placing a finger to her lips. She leans a little closer to the door.

I look to Snow. He gives me an amiable shrug.

If they’re all eavesdropping, I figure that gives me reasonable license to as well.

It takes me a moment to pinpoint the murmuring voices. I don’t know what I expected— doctors? Grim predictions about how much longer I’ll survive?— but it wasn’t what I hear.

Niall and Dev, speaking in hushed tones.

_Wait a second._

If they’re doing what I think they’re doing, they’d better hurry. I don’t have the breath to keep standing up out here while they muddle through whatever confessions they’re managing.

Probably I should have seen this coming. Or at least known that one or both of them was pining after the other. I’m intimately familiar with what that looks like.

Wellbelove sticks her head through the door, batting the rest of us back.

“So?” she asks, and I near Dev’s shaky laugh in response. That’s our cue, apparently, because Wellbelove opens the door and permits our entry. And sure enough, there are my two best mates sitting side by side on Niall’s sickbed, knees touching and cheeks pink.

I’m happy for them. I really am. I’m happy for them while they bashfully brush off Agatha’s interrogation of exactly what words were exchanged, and while Dr Wellbelove emerges and rejoices, and while Niall sets down his oxygen mask for good and smiles while the flowers wilt and die in his lungs.

I’m happy for them when the doctors get Niall’s mother on the phone and tell her that he’s fine, he’s cured. And when the blue-eyed, freckled nurse listens to Niall’s breath through his stethoscope and tells him he should be cleared to go back to Mummer’s in the morning. And when Niall and Dev step out of the ward to go for a walk around the infirmary together and have some privacy.

So happy. Just thrilled.

(I’m relieved that Niall will live. I’m not a monster.)

(Well.)

The universe hates me, so as soon as the door swings shut behind them I’m seized with a terrible coughing fit.

It hurts even more than usual. Partially due to Bunce and Wellbelove’s concerned and pitying looks. Partially due to the unusual sharp pain in my chest.

Simon wordlessly hands me a glass of water when it lets up. I sip it, and wait.

It only takes about ten seconds.

“Niall managed it,” Wellbelove blurts out imploringly. “It worked out just fine. Couldn’t you just give it a try?”

I don’t dignify her plead with a response. I haul a book over and flip it open in my lap.

“At least think about it, Baz,” murmurs Bunce, not unkindly. “You’re not getting any better.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I say, but it comes out more like a croak.

Agatha huffs. “Would you _really_ rather d—”

I stare at my hands. At my legs, in the joggers that Simon brought me. (I didn’t even know I owned joggers. They’re obscenely comfortable.) At the starchy white linens on my infirmary bed.

I cough into my elbow. A feeble handful of petals falls over me.

A few long moments later, I look up to see Bunce and Wellbelove leaving.

“We’ll give you some space,” says Bunce, apologetic. “Get some rest.”

Simon stays. He always stays.

I only realize when he opens his mouth that he hasn’t said a word this whole time.

“I had no idea they were into each other,” he says, and sits himself down on the edge of the empty bed beside mine. He braces his hands on either sides of his legs. I watch the tendons move under his skin. He has freckles there, too.

“Well, you’ve always been thick, Snow.”

“So you knew?”

I sneer at him. “No.”

He chews his lip. I can smell his brain working, and I know exactly what questions he’s itching to ask. I’m ready for them. They won’t catch me off guard. I’ll keep calm. I’ll lie smoothly, as I always do.

He tugs at his hair. “How are you feeling? You’re not at the mask stage yet.”

It takes me a moment for my mind to catch up. I was sure he’d drill me about love. _Thank magic for Simon Snow._

“Still alive, aren’t I? Can’t complain.” Crowley, my voice is hoarse. I attempt a deep breath, but my lungs simply don’t have room.

Snow is silent, worrying the crisp bedsheet between his fingers.

I can’t bear it.

“At least if this thing kills me, that’s one less thing you have to worry about,” I say. I have to catch my breath after saying so many words.

Simon’s head snaps up. He glares at me, almost beseeching. “You said you’d do the surgery,” he says. “You promised your parents. You told us you’d do the surgery if you have to.”

“We both know it’s just delaying the inevitable.”

“What the _fuck_ are you on about?”

I level a stare at him. “The war, Snow. Our great showdown. This truce can’t last forever. You’re going to kill me.”

He’s on his feet before I can blink. His hands clench and unclench at his sides and I catch a faint whiff of smoke.

“I’m not,” he growls. “I’m not going to kill you. I was never going to kill you.”

It’s definitely smoky now. It chokes my already-obstructed airways. “Snow,” I cough. “Get it together. Some of us can’t breathe as it is.”

He backs off quickly, looking panicked and visibly trying to relax and reign in his magic. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “Do you need more water?”

I wave him off. That oxygen mask doesn’t sound so bad, though, to be honest.

“Are you planning to let me kill you? Doesn’t sound very Chosen One of you,” I choke out. Crowley, I’m dizzy.

“If I had to, yeah. I’m not killing you.”

As if I could kill him. As if I could _actually_ cause him enough harm, as if I could stand to watch the life pour out of him.

“Well, I’m not killing you either,” I snap, because for some reason, for a moment, that made sense as a thing to say.

“Great,” says Snow. “Glad we’re agreed. No one’s dying. So you’ll do the surgery— _right?”_

“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it,” I mutter.

Simon tugs at his hair again. (It’s irritating. If anyone is tugging those curls, it should be me.) “So you’d really hold out for a cure just to keep the bloody feelings and still _never_ tell this person that you’re in love with them?”

“This is absolutely none of your business,” I tell him.

“Well it’s _someone’s_ business, isn’t it?” he argues. “If you had a way to save someone’s life, wouldn’t you like to know about it?”

“We’re not talking about this.”

“Well, maybe we should. You’re fighting for breath just from talking to me, Baz.”

He’s right, and I hate it. I glare at him. “Give it a rest, Snow.”

“No,” he says. “I have no idea why you’re being like this. It’s not like you have anything to worry about.”

“Oh, don’t I?”

He rolls his eyes. “I mean, you’re all—”

He gestures broadly at me. I raise an eyebrow.

“I’m all—?”

His cheeks redden. “You’ve seen yourself. Come off it. Everyone at Watford’s gagging for you.”

Change of plans. I’d like Simon Snow to set me on fire this very moment.

For some reason, I open my mouth and say, “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Enlighten me.” It’s exhausting, fighting for breath, I tell you.

Snow reddens further, and I hear the bluster coming on before it starts. I school my expression while he stumbles through: “You’re— I mean— you’re just— well, you’re a bloody brilliant, fit vampire, aren’t you? Who wouldn’t want—”

_Aleister. Crowley._

I can’t fucking breathe.

“Who wouldn’t what, Snow?” I murmur.

He glares at me, quite impressively. I’m not oblivious to the fact that he’s consciously keeping his magic in check, even though he’s terrifically flustered. Bless him, really.

“Oh, sod off,” he mutters. “Yeah, fine, we’re done with this. I’m sorry I brought it up. Just don’t die— okay?”

“Crowley.”

“Baz.”

I’m so sick of being stuck in this stiff infirmary bed. I adjust to a comfier position, and, as I do, I feel that sharp twinge again. Deep in my chest. Whatever the flowers are up to in there, it’s getting worse.

Simon frowns at me when I wince, but he just sinks back down onto the foot of my bed and bounces his leg up and down.

He shakes his head then, idly, and looks down at his hands. He chews his lip.

“ _What_ , Snow?” I wheeze.

“It’s just— I think it’s stupid,” he says. “All your secrecy. About who you fancy.”

“Snow—”

“No, I’m serious. I mean, _I’d_ want to know if I could save someone’s life. I think you’re not even giving yourself a chance.”

He looks up at me again, and I hate the earnestness in his unexceptional blue eyes. (There’s nothing special about them. It’s the only part of him that’s ordinary.) (Which just, somehow, makes him even more desirable.)

He has no idea what he’s saying.

“I mean it,” he says, when I don’t reply.

“I’m sure you do,” I mutter. “But would you still want to know, if you couldn’t?”

Simon just frowns.

“I’m hungry,” he declares, surprising exactly no one. “I’ll go get us some dinner.”

And he leaves me alone, lovesick and breathless.


	5. Chapter 5

**SIMON**

I blink awake with a terrific crick in my neck in the unquiet darkness of the infirmary. Painfully, I sit up from where I’ve been slumped against the edge of Baz’s bed. I’ve wrinkled the pages of the book I fell asleep on, which isn’t unusual. It wasn’t helpful anyway. It deserves to be wrinkled.

The window across from Baz’s bed is wide open, letting in the warm spring night and the smell of blooming flowers. A petal drifts in on a breeze, taunting.

Baz is hooked up to machines, now. A beeping hearrate monitor is clipped to his finger, his oxygen tank hums on the floor beside him (the mask is off because he’s a vain twat) and an IV feeds him nutrients through his arm ever since eating became too exhausting. He doesn’t get up to fetch his blood from the kitchen anymore, either. I do that for him. (He makes me leave while he drinks it, though.)

His family left again this afternoon. They’ve been visiting more frequently. I don’t think that’s a good sign.

He’s the only one in here, these days. Niall went back to Mummer’s last week and the others all did the surgery and stayed in London to recover. It’s been dreadful. The weather’s been warming outside while we spend our days reading useless books in this stifling bloody infirmary.

Penny and Aggie keep giving me these pitying looks. I can’t stand it. Once, I got here in time to see Penny and Baz whispering madly with their eyes narrowed at each other, and they fell deadly silent as soon as they noticed me. Still no clue what that was about.

Baz stirs in his sleep. He’s frowning and pinched, and greyer than ever. His breaths come in soft little wheezes. He really should be using his oxygen mask. I consider putting it on him, but I don’t want to risk waking him. He sleeps poorly enough as it is.

He just looks… defeated.

Not intimidating and fearsome and the fucking epitome of _tall, dark, and handsome_ like usual. Just grey and drained and terminal.

(Still handsome. Always handsome. He’ll be glad to know that if this all goes south he’ll at least be a beautiful corpse.)

(He _won’t._ But still.)

In the moonlit infirmary, he looks like a movie star in a film about a dying young man. Sickly, but in an attractive way. (He’d be dying of something sort of sexy, of course. That’s how those films go.) (Perhaps a battle wound.) He’d have some woebegone love interest at his bedside day in and day out to weep as he fades away. And with his dying breath he’d whisper something in their ear to help them move on. They’d touch his face— that statuesque cheekbone and those perfect grey lips—

His breath rattles. 

A grey hand flies up to clutch at his chest and his eyes squeeze shut before they snap open and settle on mine.

When he gasps, the sound is _horrible._

I’m on my feet hovering over him immediately. “Baz?”

He opens his mouth but petals come instead of words, forced out by the most horrific coughs I’ve heard yet— scratching, grating, gravelly sounds that make him shake. They just keep coming, not letting him draw breath, fluttering delicately into the bowl I hold out for him.

His posture is wrong. Normally he hunches up during these fits, curling in on himself with the force of it. But he keeps his back stick-straight, keeping still on the pillows like he’s frozen there.

Pink petals, pale and round, so light that in the darkness they look bone white. I’ll never see flowers the same way, after all this.

Finally, there’s a moment of reprieve.

“Something is different,” Baz whispers. There’s a fear in his eyes I’ve never seen before.

“I’ll get the doctor,” I say, as I have on many nights before. He always glares at me and tells me not to overreact.

To my horror, Baz nods.

I run.

 

**BAZ**

 

Simon charges off and I start coughing again, with the feeling that shards of glass are slicing up and down my trachea. When I move, the pain multiplies, so I hold myself as still as I can.

Something dark lands in the bowl.

It’s a flower petal, still, but dark and curled atop the sea of shell-like peony petals.

I pluck it out with trembling fingers.

 

**SIMON**

 

Dr Wellbelove skids to a halt at Baz’s side and peers down at something in Baz’s palm.

“Yes,” he mutters. “I daresay something’s different.”

I take up my place on the other side of the bed.

The petal is so red it’s nearly purple. It’s a telltale shape so familiar that even I can identify it.

“Roses,” whispers Dr Wellbelove. “Which means—”

Baz’s hand tightens on the collar of his nightshirt. I think of how still he held himself, how he seems afraid to move.

Roses.

Thorns.

Baz heaves.

His shoulders lift off the pillow so I slide my arm around them and hold him steady. Dr Wellbelove presses his stethoscope to Baz’s chest while he coughs, and I watch as his face pales while pink and red petals spew forth. Peonies. Roses. A little green leaf. Some petals that seem to be dappled with both pink and red? 

I realize Baz is leaning against me when I hear him whimper.

Not dappled in colour, I realize. Pink petals spattered with blood.

“Surgery,” Baz wheezes. “Can I—” He gasps. “I’m ready—”

“Get the mask on him,” barks Dr Wellbelove, and it takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me. I fit the oxygen mask over Baz’s nose and mouth and hold it there, and for once in his life he doesn’t put up a fight. His head falls against my shoulder.

“Shout if anything changes,” says the doctor. “I’ll go make the phone call.”

My blood chills as he hurries away. He shouldn’t leave Baz right now— are the other doctors around? I’m not capable of helping him if anything happens. I wish Penny were here. Even the other patients. _Someone._

I push the bowl of petals aside because my stomach turns at the sight of all the red.

_Thorns. Growing in Baz’s chest. Hurting him from the inside._

His breath sounds so painful I can almost feel it myself. It’s too much for him to talk properly. He has to pause for breath.

“You can,” he wheezes, “let go of me.” He leans away, but I don’t move.

“Absolutely not.”

In theory I’m the one comforting him, but having my arm around him is helping me keep calm. I can’t stand the thought of being further away from him.

Baz tries to shrug me off, but the motion makes him suck in a sharp breath.

“Don’t,” I snap. “You’ll just hurt yourself.”

“What the _fuck —_ are you doing?” he hisses.

Honestly, I’m not sure. I just know that here, at my side, with my arm around him, is right where I want him.

I want him _right here._

I want him _healthy._

I want _him._

 

**BAZ**

 

I don’t know why I’m protesting— being held (even like this) by Simon Snow is the nicest thing I’ve felt in weeks.

He smells like cinnamon. He’s deliciously warm. His heart is hammering against my shoulder and his arm around me is a tantalizing little sliver of _everything I’ve ever wanted._

Every breath feels like something tearing.

If this disease doesn’t kill me tonight, then come tomorrow I’ll be cured and never love Simon Snow again.

I may as well let myself enjoy this while I can.

His arm tightens around me.

“Who are you in love with, Baz?”

 

**SIMON**

 

Unsurprisingly, he says nothing. Shuts right down and tries to pull away from me again, but more gingerly this time.

“Don’t,” he whispers.

I let him pull away.

Then I turn on the edge of his bed so I’m facing him, his leg against mine with the blanket between us. He flinches back into his mountain of pillows.

He’s not getting away with this tonight, though. Not with this bowl of bloodied petals sitting next to him on the mattress.

I lean in, crowd him.

“Who?” I demand.

He glares at me and pulls the oxygen mask off.

“No, put that back on,” I order. He does.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

He huffs, and then winces.

Merlin, I _hate_ seeing this.

“You were so against getting the surgery, and now you’ve agreed to it and you _still won’t say who it is?”_

If looks could kill, I’d be ash.

“You refused the surgery so you could keep loving them,” I continue, “and now that you’re going through with it you won’t even— don’t you _dare_ take that mask off!”

The plastic bends in Baz’s clenched fist. His eyes are wet and shiny and I want to throttle him. Or maybe just wrap him in my arms and _squeeze._

 _“Who is it?”_ I beg.

Baz throws down the mask. “You don’t get to do this, Simon Snow,” he breathes. A tear cuts a shining track down his cheek.

“Tell me!”

“ _Please,_ ” Baz whimpers, and my heart breaks.

I can’t take this anymore. I can’t even think.

I just put my hands on his shoulders— careful not to jostle him— and kiss him.

 

**BAZ**

 

My mind blinks out.

 

**SIMON**

 

It takes a moment, but he kisses me _back._

 

**BAZ**

 

I’ve died. That or this is a dream.

 

**SIMON**

 

His lips are pleasantly cold.

Why didn’t I do this sooner?

 

**BAZ**

 

I’m still in pain, so I must be alive.

I’m neither dead nor dreaming, and Simon Snow is kissing me.

_Aleister Crowley, I’m living a charmed life._

 

**SIMON**

 

It feels so nice that I almost forget he’s got flowers in his lungs.

I pull away (reluctantly) so he doesn’t suffocate. And sure enough he’s panting, chest heaving and eyes wild and generally looking _very kissable._

(Get it together, Simon. He’s ill.)

I reach for the oxygen mask for him but he swats my hand away.

“What are you doing?” he wheezes.

“Getting the oxygen mask.”

“No. _What are you doing?”_

My cheeks heat. “Kissing you, apparently. Should I stop?”

“That depends.” He looks like a spooked animal. Like he’ll bolt any moment.

“On what?”

Baz gulps. “Whether you mean it.”

I kiss him again.

 

**BAZ**

 

I absolutely cannot handle this.

He’s kissing me. He’s _kissing me._

_(I’m kissing him.)_

If this is real, and it took my imminent death for us to get here, then _I’m an idiot we’re idiots this is ridiculous he’s an imbecile_ but his hands are warm on my shoulders and he’s doing this thing with his chin and I’m pretty sure I’m shaking all over because Simon Snow and I are kissing.

He stops again, much too quickly, and I fight to catch my breath. He stays near, so my eyes are full of shining eyes and freckles and that hesitant hint of a smile. I gasp in a breath and it almost feels deep enough.

One hand leaves my shoulder, which feels like a loss until it slides down my arm to grip my fingers.

_Crowley._

This was going to go one of three ways.

One: Miraculously, impossibly, I was going to fall out of love with Simon Snow. The Hanahaki would recede, and life would go back to normal, minus the pining. (This was the least likely outcome.)

Two: The Hanahaki would kill me.

Three: I’d undergo surgery, and emerge healthy and out of love. I’d go through life knowing that I was supposed to be in love with Simon, and remembering how badly it burned me.

I never envisioned a future in which _this_ (whatever this is) was an option.

Simon sits there, lips hanging open (mouth breather) and threads his fingers through mine.

“Baz?” he says.

I take him by the collar of his shirt and pull him back to me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)
> 
> one more after this!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting!! My life got really busy all of a sudden and this chapter was just sitting in my drafts with like two sentences until this morning. Anyway, here it is!

**SIMON**

 

I don’t sleep a wink for the rest of the night.

We managed a few more glorious (earth-shattering, life-changing, heart-stopping) minutes kissing each other breathless (quite literally) before Baz tapped out with a feeble hand to my chest. I helped get the breathing mask back on him, pushed his hair back from his forehead. Held him as his eyes slipped shut and he fell asleep against me.

And I stayed right there.

Now, in the pink dawn sunlight, my arm is asleep beneath Baz’s shoulders and some muscle in my lower back is seizing up but I don’t dare move when we’re touching so completely. Not when his brow is against my neck and his fingers are pressed to my side.

Even with most of the night spent sitting here, awake, watching him, replaying _all that_ over and over in my head, I still have no idea what the fuck is going on. I know it’s good, and that I want it badly. Probably have for a while. I know it means that some things I thought I knew about myself are not strictly accurate — but it’s _Baz._ Merlin, I’ve always been obsessed with him, haven’t I?

What I’d give to talk to Penny right now, just unpack all this and sort it out a bit before Baz wakes up and distracts me with his eyes and his voice and his sneer and sweet magic, _we kissed last night —_

“Ah, Simon. You’re still here.”

Dr Wellbelove startles me, standing all of a sudden at the foot of the bed. He gives me a little smile and moves to check Baz’s machines.

“Did Basilton sleep all right?” he asks me, frowning a little at the heart rate monitor.

“Er, yeah,” I say, try to find some way to sit up straighter without jostling Baz. There isn’t one. I stay put.

Dr Wellbelove nods, perfunctory, and arranges his stethoscope around his neck. “If you’d wake him, I need to get an updated assessment of the condition to send in. His surgery’s been scheduled for this afternoon.”

Oh. That.

We’ll have some explaining to do.

I do as he asks, though, and nudge Baz awake. He stirs with a groan, and pushes his face closer into my neck. I wish the oxygen mask wasn’t in the way.

“Baz,” I murmur. “Dr Wellbelove’s here.”

He moves then, and I reluctantly drag my arm back in as it fills with pins and needles. There isn’t really room for us side-by-side on the narrow hospital bed, not unless we’re half on top of each other like we were, so I rearrange myself on the edge of the mattress, facing Baz. His cheek has a crease on it from my shirt.

I give him a reassuring smile, but he doesn’t meet my eyes.

Baz takes off the oxygen mask and Dr Wellbelove presses the stethoscope to Baz’s chest and I try not to feel stung.

Baz’s hand lies near mine on the sheet. I slide my fingers toward his, but he reaches up to rake his hair back and folds his hands in his lap.

A frost settles over my skin, so I tear my gaze from Baz’s downcast eyes and look instead at Dr Wellbelove, who nods to himself as he listens to Baz’s heart and each of his lungs through his chest and his back. The stethoscope under his shirt makes Baz shiver. He always runs cold.

“Well, Basilton,” Dr Wellbelove says. “Your father will be here in a few hours to take you to London. The surgeon has fit you in. Best put this back on, for now.” He holds up the oxygen mask, and my heart drops.

“Wait,” I say, mind reeling. This doesn’t make sense. “He — you mean — it’s —”

“Simon?” says Dr Wellbelove.

Something cold and heavy crawls in my belly. “The — he’s still sick?”

Baz’s eyes snap up and flash icy silver. “Don’t be daft, Snow.”

His expression is wrong, though. He isn’t scornful, he’s afraid.

“What do you _mean?_ ” I demand. “That’s not — it shouldn’t —”

“I’ll give you two a moment,” mutters Dr Wellbelove, and makes himself scarce.

Baz bares his teeth at me. “Calm down, Snow. You’re not the one getting sliced up today.”

I’ve made a mistake. A huge mistake. Last night, that kiss — _those kisses —_ did I completely misread that?

Too many things swirl through my brain — _feelings_ and _Baz_ and _lips_ and _blood._ I’m lost. I’m confused. And I’m freezing with rejection.

I just know that he absolutely _can’t_ get carted off to London to have his feelings carved out. Not today, not after _this._

“I don’t know what you expected,” says Baz, cruel as I’ve ever heard him.

But I _know_ him, I _know_ his face, and I think maybe my actual mistake would be giving up right now.

“I expected you’d be better,” I choke out, and my voice sounds awkward and unsure but I need him to hear this. “Unless I’m remembering last night wrong.”

Baz sneers unconvincingly. “Maybe it didn’t mean what you thought it did.”

_Oh._ Hold on. “Maybe it didn’t mean what _you_ thought it did,” I counter. _Maybe you didn't know how_ much  _it meant_ _._

Baz looks as though I’ve hit him.

“The roses,” I recall. “The thorns. You were in pain. Does it still hurt? Or has that gone?”

Baz gives a tentative stretch, twists a little to each side. His lips curl downward but my heart gives a thump.

_Got you._ “You see? It’s a better, a bit.” I’m smiling, now. “Some part of you believes me.”

“What are you talking about?” Baz snarls.

Merlin, he’s the worst. I’d love to shut him up with my mouth right about now.

“I kissed you last night because I wanted to,” I tell him, and saying it out loud isn’t as strange as I thought it might be. It actually feels exactly right. “Because I have feelings for you, apparently.”

Baz’s stony expression doesn’t change.

“So, yeah, I thought you’d be better,” I carry on. “Unless you can honestly tell me that it’s not me you’re in love with.”

He glares at me with the stillness and beauty of a marble statue. He’s never looked more like a vampire. But I’m right — I know it — since he fell asleep last night he hasn’t coughed once, and his voice is clearer than I’ve heard it in weeks.

I wonder how long he’s felt this way. I wonder how long _I_ have.

He looks at me like he’s going to attack me, like he’ll bite me and watch me die on the sterile tile, and I start to think that actually I _have_ made a mistake and that maybe I should just go.

“You absolute _nightmare,_ ” Baz hisses, and yanks me toward him.

This kiss is like fighting, but better, and no matter how tightly I grip him I can’t seem to get close enough. It’s too much for the hospital bed, our knees crack together and we’re both pushing to get the upper hand and I don’t _have_ enough hands to put them all the places I want to touch him so it’s all just a mess and we wind up tangled hopelessly with me half in his lap and his cold hand fisted in my rumpled shirt.

We’re panting, breathing the same air, and I can’t hold back a grin when I hear his breaths coming deep and even.

He kisses my cheek and leaves his lips there. “Don’t look so smug,” he murmurs.

“‘M not,” I insist. “Just happy.”

There’s a sound from beyond the door, so we quickly reposition ourselves moments before Dr Wellbelove returns, looking a little too nonchalant.

He says nothing, just sticks his stethoscope back in his ears and gives Baz’s lungs another listen.

Baz breathes slowly and watches me. I hold my breath. _Come on. Please._

Dr Wellbelove tucks the instrument into his coat pocket. “Well, Basilton, it’s your lucky day. It seems you’re in the process of recovery.” 

We let out twin sighs of relief.

I don’t hear a word of the rest of it because I’m too busy marveling at how fast my heart starts to pound when Baz casually reaches over and holds my hand.

Merlin, I’m _never_ going to hear the end of this from Penny.

 

**BAZ**

 

It’s new and strange being back in Mummer’s House together after the whole ordeal. We’ve lived together in the room for nearly eight years, but never _ever_ anything like this.

(It’s a whole lot more fun, now.)

My spare time is now largely taken up by one of two things:

Firstly, aiding Bunce in her new mission to develop an actual cure for Hanahaki Disease. She wasn’t satisfied that the other affected students had to undergo such a horrid surgery, and has taken it upon herself to ensure that no one else should have to do the same. She and her mother are deep into research and experimentation, and she calls me in for my input regularly. I’m glad to help.

Secondly, devoting myself to memorizing every freckle on Simon Snow and kissing him to within an inch of his life. (Serves him right. He did that to me, more literally, that night in the infirmary.)

Sometimes I think I imagined it all. That it’s all been a very lovely dream and I’ll wake up back in that sickbed with roses hacking up my lungs and Simon a distant fantasy. But I also think that Simon knows I sometimes feel this way, that or he thinks I still don’t believe we’re really together, because he goes out of his way to tell me that he wants me, that he’s happy, that it’s real.

Some nights, when one of us has antagonized the other into sliding in bed with him, he presses me into the pillows and kisses me, everywhere, until I’m breathless again and on the verge of tears and all I can do is clutch him to me and wish for a lifetime of this. He falls asleep on top of me, half-crushing me, and I savour every moment of it while I plot the course I’ll take kissing each of his moles the next night, to make him feel this way too.

Watford goes back to normal, for the most part, but my life here is barely recognizable. (Dev and Niall have been unbearable, since.) (Not even because of their shy new relationship — just they haven’t stopped taking the piss since I told them about Snow and I.) (I suppose I deserve it.) Simon works with me, now, on the hunt for my mother’s killer, regardless of our truce. (The truce is actually, officially, over. Simon ended it one night in his bed when I teased him with my lips until he growled that I was evil.) (He kissed me until my lips were sore, that night, which I was briefly concerned would violate the Anathema. It didn’t.)

It’s all just _so good._ Even when we bicker, because of course we still do, and even when the Mage is driving a wedge between us, which he often does. We’ll figure it out. We keep each other safe, keep each other close. He rarely goes off in class, anymore, and I like to think it’s due to how I can pull him aside and whisper in his ear and calm him down like I always wanted to.

Once, he went off when I wasn’t in class with him.

We stepped outside at the end of the period to find all the spring wildflowers were ash.

No one, least of all Miss Possibelf, seemed to mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for sticking with this, and for all of the kind and lovely words you've left!!! It means so much, and this fic definitely wouldn't have gotten finished if not for them! 
> 
> If you liked this one, go check out my other AU, Visions Are Seldom All They Seem, here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17505182/chapters/41234273  
> It's Sleeping Beauty. It might get an epilogue at some point soon, unless it doesn't.


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